The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  “What’n’ll is the matter with this gazabo?” inquired Red.

  “Nothing. He’s just resting. I see a good many blacks stand like that,” replied Sterl.

  “Looks like a big, sandhill crane.”

  The aborigine, evidently impressed by Red, spoke to him in his native jargon.

  “Yeah?” drawled Red, and then added sonorously: “Holy Mackeli…Kalamazoo…Raspatas…Mugg’s Landin’. You one-laiged black giraffe!”

  Whereupon the aborigine, tremendously impressed, let out a flow of speech that in volume certainly matched Red’s.

  “A-huh? Thet didn’t sound so good to me. Friday, what did he say?”

  Friday indicated Krehl’s red head and replied: “Makeum frun alonga you.”

  “Hell he did?” roared Red. “Hey, you! I’m from Texas, an’ I’m liable to shoot thet one laig out from under you.”

  Upon their return to the Dann encampment Slyter called Red and Sterl to him, and informed them that Stanley Dann wanted to see them promptly.

  “Now, what’s up?” queried Sterl impatiently, quick to catch Slyter’s sober mood.

  “I’d rather Dann told you,” returned the drover. “There’s been a fight, and the drovers are upset.”

  “Yeah? Wal, if you ask me thet ain’t nothin’ new these days,” drawled Red with a bite in his tone.

  Slyter accompanied them the few rods under the trees to the bright campfire where Stanley stalked to and fro. He was bareheaded, in his shirt sleeves, a deep-eyed giant who stood erect under obvious burdens. Beryl was there in the background, with her Aunt Emily and Mrs. Slyter. A group of men, just visible near one of the tents, stood and conversed low. Their posture, with heads together, sent a shiver over Sterl.

  “You sent for us, sir,” spoke up Sterl quickly.

  “Yes, I regret to say. But the tragedy that has dogged our trek broke out again tonight. Harry Spence has been shot. The drovers just fetched him in. He died without regaining consciousness.”

  “Spence? That is regrettable, sir. But it can hardly have anything to do with us,” returned Sterl. He had not thought much of Spence or several other of the rougher element among Dann’s drovers. Spence, to judge from his tattoo marks and his foul language, had been a sea-faring man. And plenty tough, to quote Red Krehl.

  “Only indirectly,” rejoined Dann hastily. Sterl’s stilted response had reacted subtly upon him.

  “Boss, who shot Spence?” interposed Red coolly.

  “Ormiston’s drover, Bedford. Tom Bedford. He was badly wounded in the fight, but will recover.”

  “Wal, beggin’ yore pardon, boss, an’ if you ask me, there ain’t much love lost in Spence’s case, an’ if Bedford croaked, it’d be a damn good night’s job,” Red replied in cold deliberation.

  “I’m not asking you for your judgments, Krehl,” said the leader tersely.

  “I’m sorry, boss, but you gotta take them just the same.”

  Sterl put a placating and persuasive hand on Red’s shoulder. But all the same he was glad the cowboy had spoken out. He, too, was sick of subterfuge and concealment.

  “Sir, what has Ormiston to do with this…that you approach us?” Sterl inquired quietly.

  “Boys, it is only that I preferred to tell you myself, rather than have you hear it from others. I want to persuade you to see it my way. I have come to rely upon you both. I have come to have a personal regard for you. Can I exact a promise from you both…not to shed blood…except in some drastic case of self-defense?”

  “Yes, sir, you can from me,” declared Sterl, instantly rallying to his sympathy for this great and trouble-besieged man. “Red, you’ll give that promise, too, won’t you? Remember, what ever you do for him, you’ll be doing for Beryl.”

  “Pard, I ain’t so shore about Beryl,” the cowboy rejoined bluntly. “Boss, you ain’t askin’ me to make a promise like thet an’ keep it forever. I’d have throwed my gun long ago but for you.”

  “Krehl, don’t misunderstand me,” Dann returned in haste. “I would not presume to have you deny your creed, your honor. I beg this promise only for the present, because I still hope and pray we can go through this trek without undue strife among us drovers…at least without bloodshed.”

  “Wal, boss, as I see it, you ain’t,” flashed Red. “It wouldn’t be natural. You’ve got some low-down hombres mixed up with you on this trek. An’ everyday the strain grows wuss. All the same I’ll give you my promise thet I won’t raise a hand against Ormiston, or anyone, except in self-defense…or, let me say, to save somebody’s life.”

  “Thank you, Krehl. I begin to appreciate what it means for you to give such a promise,” replied Dann. “Don’t think I fail to see the growing complexity of this trek. If I’d let myself believe, it’d be appalling. But we shall succeed. Now, for the detail that will be as offensive to you as it was to me. This morning a new contingent of blacks arrived. It seems there were some unusually comely lubras among them. Ormiston propitiated them with gifts…an action Slyter and I are strongly opposed to. But Ormiston did it, and took some of the lubras to work around his camp. Spence and Bedford quarreled over one of them. It was obvious that all the drovers had been drinking. The two men fought, with the result I told you. Ormiston sent the report to me. And I at once ordered him here. I took him to task. We had bitter words, that might have led to worse but for Beryl. She came between us, and in part, when Ormiston maligned you boys, she took his side. She believes him. I do not.”

  “Thanks, boss. But spill it. What has Ormiston said now?” retorted Sterl harshly.

  “In the first place, he was extremely ruffled at my censure,” continued Dann. “Then he ridiculed my offense at the idea of his drovers making up to the lubras. And the part applicable to you is this, in his own words…‘Look at your Yankee cowboys…Hazelton, posing as a gentleman, and Krehl as a comedian…to please the ladies! They go from their soft speeches to Beryl and Leslie to the embraces of these nigger lubras!’”

  If Stanley Dann expected the cowboys to arise in rage to disclaim against their traducer, he reckoned without his host. Nothing Ormiston might do or say could surprise them any more.

  As fate would have it, Leslie had followed them over, and Beryl with the two women, evidently wishing to intercept her, had all come within range of Dann’s stern voice, as he quoted Ormiston’s vituperation. Sterl threw up his hands. He sensed events. What was the use? He knew these things would happen. Let them happen. However, Red tenaciously held onto something akin to ideals. Stanley Dann threw fuel upon the fire by reprimanding the feminine contingent for listening to what was none of their business. Mrs. Slyter attempted to drag Leslie away. The girl, not only would not leave, but she came up to the campfire and Beryl was at her side. Sterl, with an inward groan, felt at once contempt for Beryl and a saving pity. She could not be held responsible for any silly or mad thing she might do or say. That responsibility rested upon the head of her pioneer father.

  Red, keen as he was, did not fortify himself with subtle knowledge and bitterness, as Sterl had done. But his innate chivalry permitted no intimation that these girls could believe such vile slander.

  “Beryl, you needn’t look so orful bad,” he said gently. “Leastways not on my account. I jest promised yore dad I wouldn’t throw a gun on Ormiston for what he said.”

  “You don’t deny it, Red Krehl?” Beryl cried passionately, beside herself.

  “Deny…wh-what?” stammered Red.

  “You know. Your ready wit and humor fail you here.”

  “Wal, there’s more than thet failin’ me, I reckon. What you mean…I don’t deny?”

  “Ormiston’s accusation that you cowboys go from me and Leslie…to…those lubras,” rang out the outraged girl. She was pale under her tan, and her big eyes strained with horror.

  Red twitched as if he were about to draw a gun. His red visage lost its ruddiness then. “Me deny thet? Hell, no! I’m a Texan, Miss Dann. You English never heahed of Texas, let alone know what a T
exan stands for in regard to women. What you’ve got in yore mind, Beryl Dann, what you think of me, is what’s true of yore rotten lover. An’ by Gawd, someday you’ll go on yore knees to me for thet!”

  The girl recoiled. She gasped. Her eyes dilated. But she could not cope with passion and jealousy and hate—those primitive emotions that this trek had increased by leaps and bounds. Her intelligence, that faculty of hers which governed affection and faith, grasped the distortion of some insanity or injustice here. But she let Red stalk away without another word.

  Sterl saw with a pang this calamity fall upon the loyal and devoted head of his friend. He felt Red’s hurt so keenly that it seemed almost his own.

  “Sterl! Sterl!” Leslie burst out wildly. “You deny…that…that…. Or I’ll hate you!”

  “Leslie, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me what you believe,” returned Sterl, cold and aloof, without scorn. Then he addressed the parents of the girls. “Dann, Slyter, and you, Missus Slyter, you all can’t fail to see what your wilderness outback has done to your precious offspring. Next, they’ll condone in Ormiston and his bunch the very thing they insult us with now!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As for Leslie, who met him that morning at breakfast as if awakening from a nightmare, and who appeared stunned to bewilderment that he did not notice her, Sterl felt that she, the same as Beryl, must learn her bitter lesson. Until that time she would not exist for him, so far as intimacy and friendly contact were concerned. He was deeply hurt, but not resentful. She was only a young girl, sentimental, wayward, passionate, placed in a terrible situation, to which she had reacted as might have been expected. Sterl felt sorry for her. Little by little his love had grown until it had almost made him forget that he was an outlaw who, if he considered marriage, must find himself in a grave plight. Sterl had been hurt before by love. He could not kill this new love, but he put it aside. Krehl’s love affair with Beryl, however, had a fair chance to survive. Sterl seemed to feel something deep and latent in this Dann girl. She was blindly in love with this dark-browned bush-ranger. But when she learned the truth about Ormiston, as must inevitably happen, it was Sterl’s opinion that the girl would hate him more than she had loved him.

  January blazed to its end, but the rains did not come. They might skip a year. The heat and the flies had become insupportable. Yet human life lived on, although in each and every person’s being there were signs, even in himself, revealing to Sterl’s keen eyes that white people could not live there for long. The days were terrible; the sky was a vast copper dome close to the earth; the night hot even till dawn. Work and meals were undertaken before sunrise and after sunset. The mob of cattle grazed slowly by night and rested by day. The flies were harder on them than the sun. Hundreds of calves were born. Stanley Dann had now more cattle than when he had left Downsville.

  Bedford, being a tough and phlegmatic man, recovered from his serious wound. Hathaway came down with some kind of fever which neither Ormiston nor Dann could alleviate. Emily Dann was a woman unused to life in the open, and, despite what had appeared at first a certain robustness, she began to fail. It was mental, Sterl thought, more than physical. She simply dried up into a shadow of her former self, and met death with a wan and pathetic gladness.

  Eric Dann presented a problem to Sterl. The man had something on his mind, either a cowardice he could not beat, a gnawing indecision about splitting with his brother, or something secret. Sterl had seen criminals not big enough to stand up under the adversity that tried men’s souls, and it seemed to him there was a furtive similarity between their moods and Eric’s. Ormiston had turned gaunt of visage, hollow-eyed. But for that matter, all the drovers lost flesh, hardened, tanned almost as black as Friday, and, if they ever smiled, Sterl did not see it. It was in Ormiston’s eyes, however, that the difference lay. He never met Sterl’s scornful gaze. He ceased to eat at Dann’s table, but at sunset and dusk he haunted Beryl, and kept her up late. Beryl Dann could not lose her grace of form or beauty of profile, but she grew thin, and her large, violet eyes had a wild look.

  Leslie bore up surprisingly well under this oppression and travail. She lost weight, but very little. The sun burned her very dark. She grew quieter, less cheerful, far more considerate and helpful. She was growing older. She had courage, and despite an apparent realization of tragedy she carried on in a way to win Sterl’s respect more than ever. But she had not yet betrayed a spiritual awakening to the wrong she had done Sterl. At times she was childish, wistful, appealing. She missed his help, his encouragement and stimulation. She approached Sterl endlessly with subterfuges, innocent advances, unthinking expectations which were never realized, and which left her pondering and sad.

  Stanley Dann proved to be the great physical and spiritual leader Sterl had imagined he would be. Dann did not change, except to lose a few pounds in weight. He remained imperturbable, cheerful, confident, and active during the hours that activity was safe. He seldom talked to his brother, he never voluntarily addressed Ormiston; he often came to Slyter’s camp to smoke and talk a little. Unconsciously he relied upon the cowboys more than upon his other drovers. Slyter and his wife were admirable helpmates to this great pioneer. They had faith in him and in the future he had planned. They had also the unimaginative and plodding natures, coupled with physical stamina, to endure to the limit with this trek and its awful wait.

  Always when Sterl watched these people, with whom he had cast his fortunes, and whose hopes and lives had become as his own, he ended by going back to study Friday, the aborigine, who day by day loomed greater in his sight. Here was a man. His color mattered little. His hair must have been white, if that meant anything. He worked every day. He was always on guard with Sterl and Red. He had made their lives his life. He asked nothing for his allegiance. He must have understood them. Separated from them by inestimable ages, by aboriginal mystery and darkness of mind, he yet felt for them, for their trials and sorrows and terrors. It was something Sterl felt and could not explain, although more than once Friday had electrified him with divination of his depressed moods.

  “Bimeby rains come. All good,” he said on several nights. And once, as if the question of rain was not altogether the trenchant thing, he wagged his black head, and gazed at Sterl, his great black eyes unfathomable, yet strangely intelligent in the starlight. “Black fella savvy Ormiston tinkit he get cattle, Missy Dann, eberyting. But no, boss Hazel, nebber!”

  Sterl lifted his gaze to the stars and thought of things unsolvable but inspiring and strengthening. In the lonely hour, out on that forbidding veldt, he believed the black man. He felt the brotherhood of man in him that once he had known in an Indian he had befriended, and who had never failed him. There was something omniscient in this, something which made him hate the elemental pressure all around, of the human and the inarticulate.

  Days back Sterl had taken the journal from Leslie’s listless hands, and was not surprised that she had missed many recordings of late. He filled these in from memory, and, thereafter, wrote the daily report himself, knowing full well how valuable it would be when the trek was ended. There would be other treks, other brave pioneers like Stanley Dann, to whom such a journal would be priceless, even if it chronicled privations and tragedies without end.

  Sterl once had a look into Dann’s journal, to find it a compendium of dates, miles, camps, hopes and faiths, with a woeful lack of practical details. The leader was a dreamer.

  On Friday, February Thirteenth, the limit of heat was reached—a hundred and twenty-five—in the shade. It had to be the limit because Dann’s thermometer burst as if the mercury had boiled. Red said it was a good thing. They had all been asking how hot it was, watching the instrument, wondering how much hotter it would get, and if they could live through it. But now there would be no way to learn.

  Still the next day was worse. The early sun looked like molten metal; the noonday sun would have burned the eyeballs sightless. Sterl and Red waded into the river a dozen times witho
ut bothering to remove their garments. On the way back to camp those wet garments dried, except the leather boots, and they did not remain wet an hour.

  Sterl seldom visited the aborigine camp now, and only because he scorned to substantiate Ormiston’s blackguard slander by staying away altogether. But perhaps that lingered only in his own mind. Everybody seemed to be concerned with keeping alive, and not drying up to blow away in the hot breeze.

  Nevertheless, Sterl had been both drawn to these blacks and repelled by them. Some of the naked children had come to run to him, shy, bright-eyed, trusting. The half dingo dogs had learned to stop barking at him. The hideous old gins and the withered old men had smiles for him. Only the bold lubras eyed him askance.

  The birds and beasts and reptiles he encountered in his morning walk did not trouble to move out of the way. Almost he could pet the gray, old kangaroos; the wild owl would peck at him, but not fly. The parrots and cockatoos knew him as well as Gal and Cocky and Jack. There was a goanna that he had saved from the ravaging black boys, and even it seemed to know him without fear. At least it did not run from him. There were compensations, Sterl thought, for the excuses some of the partners evidently made for him, and for the dislike of Yankees that had to crop out in these troublesome times. Stanley Dann, however, always had a niche in Sterl’s mind, apart from his lesser companions. And as the days wore on, burned on toward an end that must come soon to annihilation or salvation, Sterl pitied the girls more, and forgot his hard protective indifference long enough to sorrow for them.